barrybait

Like Sallystrothers said, I think thats the same stuff I used from West Marine. Said to stabilize and strengthen deteriorated/dry rot type wood problems. And thanks Mark, I am currently trying pvc and am on the learning curve, may get ahold of you to help me out.

D2T as a sealer does not give me much time to apply when I am doing an 8" wood wake bait but as a sealer and as a top coat it gives me that great wood knock when the bait walks. I have good results with the same hardness using a "sealing epoxy" I bought at West Marine. It is mixed 2:1 instead of 1:1 and it worked great with much more soak time on the bait before final hardening. However it was way too expensive at about 60 bucks for the two parts of 5 and 10 oz respectively. At tap plastics they seemed to know the product and they sell it for about 50 bucks for 16 and 32 oz package. Gives me the hard knock and has a longer working (soak) time on the raw wood.

Rainbow Trout is one of the favorites here due to 1) Trout plants on local resevoirs, and 2)natural Steelhead run, but that's on the Calif. Delta. Baby Bass is always good too.

Happy New Year every one. Started it out fishing a New Year's Day Turkey Shoot. Finished in the very prestigious "first out of the money". lol

I use them on my crankbaits because it helps the baits come thru all the cover better. Thru wood, tules, and weeds, and those great squarebills come on thru clean until a bass tries to kill 'em. Hook up ratios have been good and very few fish come off after hooked if you're using a good crankbait rod that you can load up with a deep bend.

dbt, If you got a diagram/instruction with your gun, check it carefully while you disassemble, clean, and reassemble your gun. I see where you said it is a gravity feed but the airbrush still needs to create a siphon effect to draw the paint thru the nozzle. The airflow creates a vacuum that draws the paint from the cup. If you are missing a gasket or one part is missing or leaking into another chamber it will destroy the ability of the airflow to develop a vacuum. Possibly a small teflon seal may have fallen out or a small o-ring is bad and you didn't notice. Some use beeswax to seal some threads. Once it's right, test spray with water and low pressure, 5-10psi should be fine. Someone just posted a link to a guy that tested all types of airbrushes and shows diagrams of all this. Good luck and don't get flustered, we've all been thru this at some level I think. Back to original topic, I have been under the impression that I must heat dry the Createx paint. We may want to ask Createx about this since we are not applying to textiles. Maybe the above...that it is done so that textiles could be washed might be all there is to it. However, I feel that my paint must be fully cured to achieve maximum strength. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link so if my primer is attached to the plastic, and my color coat is only attached(bonded) to the primer, then my next color is only bonded to my previous color....you get the idea. Now I apply my top protective/waterproof coat over the top of multiple layers, then how strongly is my top protective coat attached to the plastic? I hope some of our more experienced members can shed some light on this. In industry, coating are tested for bonding strength to pipelines, etc by glueing an exact size circle to the finished coating and letting it dry. The circle is connected so that you can connect a scale to it, then pull until the paint connection to the pipe fails and you wind up with a chip of paint on your circle, and a measurement on the scale. Do the math and you get the bonding strength to the pipe in lbs per square inch. Oh! I see Gon2long just posted the airbrush link above. It's perfect for this. lol

X2 Brent. Merry Christmas everyone. Enjoy family and food and safe travels to all., Barry

I recently filled a ballast hole in a pvc bait with epoxy and it was a pain and it is heavier so I changed up and shaved and chopped some pvc, mixed it in with my D2T and it worked great and sanded nicely. Do the same with wood to help maintain density and use less epoxy.

Relentless......that bait looks great! I agree with you that it will turn out much better with a more precise pattern on a smooth surface. Any texture on the bait surface distorts the sharp lines and shading effect resulting is a less crisp pattern. I had the same trouble with the aluminum gutter guard mesh but with that the hardest part is achieving zero clearance to the bait. All the shower loofah I found was so fine I didn't feel like it would shade well when spraying at an angle but it worked for you. Congrats.

I'll send you a pm maybe sometime when you're going thru town or when out at Russo's we can compare wake baits. As for the pvc, I did all my carving with a box cutter and x-acto knives after band saw cutting the side and top profile. Then I round and smooth with a1" belt sander. On wood baits I used screw eyes from lurepartsonline. I like the long ones in .072 for hinges and hooks and sometimes use the .092 for line tie. With the pvc I am bending stainless steel wire forming the line tie and hinges the way I learned from the jrhopkins video. You might want to check that out. Im recently doing a narrow lure and for the hook hangar I twisted a loop and left long ends then drilled two small holes up and out the top of the bait. Seated the hook hangar with the long ends out top, epoxied all up and bent the ends over on top of the bait. Got to be very strong. Lot off ways to go. Search around on here for more ideas.

deltarat, what delta you rat'n. I'm on Cal Delta in Oakley and I'm working on both pvc and basswood wake baits if you're close we might compare notes.

Thanks Mark. Think I need to get out of the hardware store and take a walk thru the drug store isles for a change.

cms. I think the B in BCS means bottom or siphon feed. If you want to be able to clean and change colors fast you might want to take it back and get one with the cup on top....gravity feed. It really helps with multiple color changes especially with small amounts. You can really clean the cup and put in 2 drops of paint to highlight the gill plate then clean and change another color. Can't do that with the siphon feed because you have to fill the siphon each time. (if that's not what the B means, disregard this)

After all the scoops on here I bought the Iwata Neo at a new Hobby Lobby that opened close to home. With my coupon got it for 42 bucks. You guys were right. The gravity feed brushes are much easier to use and clean and for using small amounts of paint. I painted a 8 inch rainbow trout wakebait turned out great but I also used it to paint a 1.5 and a 2.5 which were detailed jobs with many color changes in another thread "does anyone know how to achieve this effect" and it worked great for that too. Easier to clean and keep clean. I'm still wanting to get a Revolution or Eclipse but I wanted the neo anyway because I let some kids from a bass fishing team come over and paint. I think my Badger 150 is going to be a back-up brush. Thanks for the info, my hobby lure painting life got easier.

No problem with the mesh scratching the paint, What looks like a mark in the pic above is a reflection from an overhead flour. light. The flat aluminum mesh is a little tougher with the compound bends. The top of the mesh is where I folded it over and hammered it between steel plates. Then I sprung it open and slipped the 2.5 in there and started forming it around the lure trying to get zero clearance. Too much curve near gill plate wanted to lift the grid off the bait right behind the gills so I did a couple small folds at the side of the head by pinching the material together with needle nose pliers, then I hammered a small bulge lightly with the side of the pliers to get it to fit very closely to the bait. Trimmed around bottom with heavy scissors. Once I had the entire scale area of the bait painted with dark moss green, I heat cured it (Createx) and sprung the cage open and slipped it in easily. Clamped the cage with vise grips and locking forceps. Then is was easy. Lots of color changes but bait in a cage you can set down anywhere. Haha. As for the loofah I just don't know. Can't visualize it yet, My loofah is 3 inches round and 10 inches long. Still I can't stop looking at the BB Lures bait. It is so precise......wow! My bait is course compared to that.

I worked up another bait today. A 2.5 squarebill. Used the mesh my wife found that we bought some years ago. It is not exactly the same as BB Lures uses but it is close and I was able to duplicate a very similar effect that turned out great I think. I will attach. I used aluminum expanded metal gutter guard type mesh but the pattern was much smaller than used in the last pics I posted and the mesh was flattened which made it easier to get the effect we are looking for. I had a much more difficult time forming this mesh over the bait and after a couple failed attempts, I cut a larger section that I folded in half to form a hinge, then formed it around the bait so that I could just spring open the hinge a little and slip the bait in. Then I clamped it with whatever I had available. Bottom line is that I really got a nice job out of it. Am going to attach pics. No matter how good or bad it turned out, this BB Lures guy is awesome and I am certainly not after his job, just want to churn out some awesome lures. He is talented. I will probably never achieve the precision he has. I am having some fun. I'm glad tek started this it is going to step up my game I am needing to paint up some Golden Shiner lures and they have a course scale pattern with a dark highlight that I want to use.